


don't falling stars burn the brightest?

by silverxrain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 23:30:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3547781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverxrain/pseuds/silverxrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the angels were surprised when God put flighty young Anael in charge of a garrison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

All the angels were surprised when God put flighty young Anael in charge of a garrison. She was too close to humans, they all thought, she watched them, as was her assignment, but she wanted more, she wanted to be with them, maybe - the unspeakable, even one of them.

But Anael took her garrison, and led it. She led them into battle, smote demons and unworthy humans and rogue angels. She healed the humans who weren't meant to die, and carried the righteous souls to Heaven. Castiel, the youngest, watched her and learned about war and wrath and tenderness and humanity.

The other angels grew to respect her and love her, fiery Hester and aloof Uriel, jesting Balthazar and innocent Samandriel. They all learned something from her. Hester learned vengeance was a right, Uriel learned to be merciless in the face of achieving your goals, Balthazar learned that cunningness kept you alive in a war, and Samandriel learned that humans always responded best to kindness.

Castiel, the youngest, simply adored her.

Anael's garrison became the best in Heaven, the crack squad. God sent them on more and more dangerous missions, until Anael started to question orders. Who was giving them the commands to slaughter whole towns with disease? Who was giving the orders to let demons roam free, so that humans might learn to hunt them?

God then sent her down to earth, and Anael thought it was good, she might help the humans this way. But he commanded her to be silent, invisible to them at all times, and simply to watch.

Death, and suffering and pain and loss she could easily have prevented with a touch of her hand, yet she took no vessel and God told her to wait.

A thousand years, she waited.

Empires fell, civilisations collapsed, new ones rose from the ashes only to go down in flames again.

The wheel of life turned.

Babies were born, and things created.

Bit by bit, humans learned.

And then they learned to destroy.

Machine guns, tanks, fighter planes, armies, soldiers. Starvation, the Plague, the Four Horsemen rode the earth. The Great Wars. Anael huddled in the dark in the bomb shelters with the frightened families and children, and sang softly to them, hoping that it would somehow reach them and calm them. She couldn't help them. She couldn't save them. She couldn't even ask why.

After an age, she was recalled to Heaven.

Anael's heart had been sore for home, and for her father. Her father who had told her to do nothing. That didn't sound like the orders given when she was a fledgling, when God told Balthazar to watch over Moses as he led his followers to salvation, told Hester to give Jesus the power to heal the blind and lepers.

So Anael, one of God's favorites, stretched out to reach her father, and to her horror, her fingertips brushed thin air. Nothing. He was gone.

Despair coursed through her, and she withdrew from her garrison. Castiel, the youngest, was concerned and tried to follow her, but Uriel had taken command and Castiel could not disobey his orders that Anael was to be left alone.

Anael stayed alone for a time in Heaven, doing nothing but brooding. She remembered her time with the humans. The way that they had supported each other, even in wartime. The look she saw in the eyes of children and the eyes of parents, the look that older siblings had when they joked with their younger ones, the look old couples, newlyweds, even teenagers gave each other. The look that meant love. The chocolate cake baked that meant comfort. And peppermint and Christmas in the winter and the smell of rose gardens in summer and fresh air in spring, golden and red leaves on the ground in autumn, and alcohol and desperation with cigarettes, and salt water in the sea and sand in the mouth, cities full of smoke and people, deserts not empty of life, and a thousand other things.

Compassion, resentment, wonder, jealousy, grief, contentment, exhilaration, fear and love. Always love, wherever she went. But not here. Not in Heaven. Not from her absent father or her sisters and brothers who turned away upon command.

Brimming with desperation and determination and above all, hope, Anael reached into the core of her being, grasped hold of her grace and _tore_. It hurt like nothing she had ever felt, but she ripped it right out of her and held it, streaming blue and bloody in her hand. Castiel, the youngest of her garrison, she remembered, was watching her, horrified. He would be the last thing she saw in her life as an angel.

She blew him a kiss, and let herself fall.


	2. Chapter 2

Anael could only recall the incredible sensation of falling as fast as a comet, streaking down through the earth's atmosphere. She vaguely wondered if it would hurt when she hit the ground, but she couldn't remember that part. It might have, she would never know.

She could remember the first breath she had taken as a human being. She remembered opening her eyes and seeing the world in all its color and dimension for the first time.

When she was two, she thought of her father for the first time.

She screamed and cried and kicked, terrified as a wounded animal. She had committed the ultimate crime - to fall, to tear what made her his creation right out of her body. It had hurt so much - nothing natural could hurt that much.

But as her parents soothed her and eventually calmed her altogether, she realised that God had created humans too, in all their flawed beauty. They were not wrong things, or twisted. And God had said to love them. They couldn't be that bad. It wasn't bad to be one of them. He might forgive her.

But to her brothers and sisters, she was still a traitor.

She remembered praying when she was four years old that they'd never find her. Never take away the taste of strawberries or the smell of wax crayons or the feeling of falling asleep in her mother's arms. She knew now that she would never go back, not willingly. She would rather die than give up all the things she was feeling for the first time.

Anael valued it all so much, even the emotions that hurt. Even rain and cold, even scraped knees and harsh words, because they made her _feel_ things, such a novelty for an angel made of stone. Her father told her the story of when she had broken her arm, and the paramedics hadn't known what to make of it, she was _smiling_ and clutching her arm, crying, yes, but unmistakably smiling.

They'd taken her to a psychologist, because of that and the incident when she was two, but the professional had been unable to find anything clinically wrong with her mental state and merely told her parents she was 'special'.

"Oh, we know she is," her mother had said, hugging Anna to her chest. Anna revelled in a feeling she thought was best of all - to be cherished, showered with physical love and affection like her real father had never given her. Her parents always called her their little miracle, and slowly, Anna let herself believe that that was all she was. A miracle child, who was a little strange, but beloved by friends, teachers and relatives alike. Her aunts cooed over her, saying she had her mother's hair and her father's eyes. She made friends easily, wherever she went, and her teachers encouraged her to study journalism, since she clearly had an aptitude. Everyone looked at Anna Milton and said 'that kid is going places'.

Anna was studying for college. Exams, making it to her job on time and staying within her allowance budget were the most stressful things in her life.

She was just an ordinary student, a girl who was going places.

And then, one night, lying in her dorm, it echoed through her head, as loud as if it had been shouted out joyously through the hallways, and awoke things in her that she had long suppressed.

_Dean Winchester is saved._

That was the beginning of the end.


End file.
